Door to Door Marketing?

An email recently from someone asking about the effectiveness of door to door marketing. 

steve, is going door to door and talking to the people more effecteve than throwing the flyer on the driveways?  
blake

My Response:

Hi Blake:

Good morning. 

Personally I would not go door to door.  I mean just imagine the time needed to do this.  Whew…it's a lot.  As I've written about before, it's all about going after a massive number of people.  And the key is to go after these people in the shortest amount of time.  Going door to door doesn't do this.

So if flyer marketing is what you're thinking about (good choice because it's cheap), then I would contemplate hiring someone (2 or 3 kids) to do it for you.  I went out every saturday morning (me and 3 kids) and hit the neighborhoods hard.  By the end of the morning, around 1000 flyers would be distributed. 

My cost was only $60 ($20 per kid) and $50 in flyers.  The phone started ringing immediately.  I'd end up with 7 or 8 jobs totaling anyway from $1000 (if I was focusing on smaller neighborhoods with retirement homes) to $3000/$3500 for larger homes in other subdivisions. 

The return on investment is huge. And that's just one Saturday!  Do this EVERY saturday and watch your business literally explode.

This business really is very, very easy.  It just requires consistent marketing as described above.

In addition to this, you can always fire up the "throw the flyer out of the car" technique.  Make sure you put an attractive flyer in attractive packaging and throw it close to the garage (nice rock inside bag).  It takes a little bit of prep work in preparing your baggies.  But the actual distribution time shouldn't take long at all.  I spoke to someone recently who said they got out 500 flyers in an hour and a half this way.  Man oh man….that's 2000 flyers out in a measly 6 hours.  It's fast, it's easy, it's relatively cheap, and the calls will come.

Anyway…hopefully this answers your "door to door" question.  These are just my thoughts on it obviously, but it's all about time. We only have a finite amount of it when it comes to marketing since we have to do the estimating, the jobs, the customer service, etc. If we take too long on the marketing side of the equation, then our customer base will not grow as it should.  So speed is of the essence.   Especially when someone is new to the biz.  After a period, we can slow down a bit (never stop though) because we'll have referrals coming in, we'll be doing repeat business, etc. etc.  Plus our reputation will be growing and prospects will seek us out. 

Take care for now Blake.  Talk soon.

Regards,

Steve